


A Study in Sleuthing

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, M/M, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 06:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: Sometimes Hanzo wondered how his life went from committing crimes to solving them.Sometimes things change. And sometimes, those changes lead places you would never expect.Like standing next to a fellow ex-con playing detective.





	A Study in Sleuthing

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fucking retired, I did this solely because I saw a challenge, take this monster of a piece of writing and we will never speak of it again. 
> 
> yes, this is not historically accurate at all, who cares, it's a mess anyway, time is an illusion

Sometimes Hanzo wondered how his life went from committing crimes to solving them.

If you’d told him this career path at age twenty, he would have laughed in your face. Especially if you told him he would be doing the crime solving in London of all places. The only criminals who went on to rat out their fellow men were the ones who were terrible at crime, and Hanzo was far from being terrible at anything, let alone at being the son of a crime boss. When he was fifteen, he was already a master of extortion and bribery. When he was seventeen, he’d already killed a man and gotten away with it. When he was twenty, he was next in line for the empire his father built. No, Hanzo would not have believed himself to ever “switch sides” not then, not in his youth. 

He wasn’t in his youth anymore. He knew things changed. And sometimes, those changes lead you places you would never expect.

Like standing next to a fellow ex-con playing detective for example. 

They’d been called down to investigate in the morning. A dead body found in the river, killed with a pocketbook knife and missing one shoe. This wasn’t the type of crime they usually were called in to investigate: the Yard liked their consult when it came to career criminals, assassins and other groups. Not something as simple as a body dumping. Today was an exception for one reason, and one alone.

The man was dressed like a rancher from America. A honest to God rancher with the boots and all. He even had the type of pistol American’s in the West liked to use. His hat was how people found him; hard to miss an American Ranchers had floating on a river right in the middle of London. That made it more than an odd body dumping. 

No, that made it their type of case. One for McCree and Hanzo, consulting detectives. 

“I cannot believe,” McCree said as soon as they stepped on the scene, the body already covered with a tarp. “We got ourselves a real vaquero. In London of all places.”

One of the new Yarders looked McCree’s way, surprised. McCree’s American accent and occasional Spanish slang tended to surprise people, given how he now adapted to London’s way of dress. Hanzo liked the accent personally; it reminded him he wasn’t the only foreigner in one of the largest cities in the world. That, and his slang seemed to irritate everyone in London to an absurd degree.

“He’s a dead vaquero, McCree,” Hanzo said, lifting up the tarp to inspect the body. The Yard didn’t bother to interfere: Hanzo was a Doctor after all. Or at least, that’s what his forged medical license and university certificate said.

(In Hanzo’s personal opinion, growing up assisting the Yakuza’s paid-off doctor and learning a handful of field medicine was enough to constitute a Doctor title, at least when it came to inspecting the dead. It wasn’t like he could harm the person more, after all.)

“How dead?”

Hanzo pressed two fingers to the corpse’s neck. No pulse, that was to be expected, and cold. Also to be expected; the man was in a river. “Hard to tell with the time he spent in the water. Likely not long: he was floating when found and not much decomposition.”

“Killed before the plunge?”

“The letter opener in his heart didn’t give that away?.”

“True, but I like to ask, Doc.”

Hanzo rolled his eyes. The Doctor perception was partially McCree’s fault. It had been his idea to pass Hanzo off as a doctor to help him gain clearance into crime scenes. Apparently, McCree was tired of having to deal with Moria and thought having his own Doctor would allow him to avoid the woman entirely. 

It didn’t work, but Hanzo couldn’t blame him for trying. Moria was  _ unpleasant _ on the best of days. She reminded him of the fictional doctor Frankenstein. All she was missing was her monster. 

McCree bent down next to him, inspecting the letter opener with his magnifying glass. It was old, a relic of McCree’s time under another American detective. “They left in it. Sloppy.”

“It could be a message.”

“Maybe. But it’s a cheap one, and not particularly stylized. If it’s a message, it’s probably in the man’s dress, not the letter opener.” McCree had his eyes on the man’s face. If he recognized him from his crime days, he didn’t show it. Hanzo still didn’t know much of McCree;s criminal past when he was in America, but he knew enough that this would be the kind of dress of people who ran in his former circles. When they had privacy, Hanzo would have to ask McCree if the outfit was accurate to what he knew over a decade ago. For now, he’d have to make the deducing himself.

Hanzo looked at the man’s outfit. He’d dressed a few corpses before back in his Yakuza days, a few for funerals, some after…. hunting accidents. If one cared to take time when it came to staging at scene, it could be hard to tell if the clothing was truly staged or not. But if one was sloppy-

“The shirt has far too little blood on it to be something he wore when he was stabbed,” Hanzo said, eyeing the would. “And the shirt looks to be a size too small.” One of the buttons was hanging on only by a string. 

“Think he was put in this after then?”

“It’s possible.”

“Possible enough to be interesting.” McCree looked over to the sidewalk, where the man’s hat was now laid. He tilted his head, stroking his beard. “You think I could get one of those hats shipped to me from America? Never managed to snag one while I was in the States and I think it’d suit me.”

Hanzo rolled his eyes. He doubted McCree didn’t have one of those wide brimmed hats at one point. “Please spare me.”

“And where’s the fun in that Doc?”

No, Hanzo never expected to be solving crimes when he was young. Nor did he expect to be solving them with a strange American in the middle of London. It was different from what he expected himself to be at that age in almost every aspect.

But as Hanzo had learned, things turning out different than expected wasn’t always bad. And sometimes, being different from what you expected, from what your family expected, was better. 

“If you get one of those hats, you must order me one too.”

McCree grinned wide. “You got it partner.”

No, different than expected wasn’t always bad at all. 


End file.
